Warsaw.--A Polish Doctor.--Battle of Grokow.--The Outbreak.--The
fatal Issue.--Present Condition of Poland.--Polish Exiles.--Aspect
of Warsaw.--Traits of the Poles.
A LETTER dated at Warsaw to my friends at home begins thus: "I have
reached this place to be put on my back by a Polish doctor. How long he
will keep me here I do not know. He promises to set me going again in a
week; and, as he has plenty of patients without keeping me down, I have
great confidence in him. Besides, having weathered a Greek, an Armenian,
and a Russian, I think I shall be too much for a Pole." There was not a
servant in the house who understood any language I spoke, and my friend
kindly proposed my taking a room with him; and, as he had many
acquaintances in Warsaw, who thronged to see him, he had to tell them
all the history of the American in the bed in one corner. All the next
day I lay in the room alone on a low bedstead, looking up at the ceiling
and counting the cracks in the wall. I was saved from a fit of the blues
by falling into a passion, and throwing my boots at the servant because
he could not understand me. Late in the evening my friend returned from
the theatre with three or four companions, and we made a night of it, I
taking medicine and they smoking pipes. They were all excellent fellows,
and, as soon as they heard me moving, came over to me, and, when I fell
back on my pillow, covered me up, and went back, and talked till I
wanted them again. Toward daylight I fell asleep, and, when the doctor
came in the morning, felt myself a new man. My doctor, by-the-way, was
not a Pole, but a German, physician to the court, and the first in
Warsaw; he occupied a little country-seat a few miles from Warsaw,
belonging to Count Niemcewicz, the poet and patriot, who accompanied
Kosciusko to this country, and married a lady of New-Jersey; returned
with him to Poland, was with him on his last battle-field, and almost
cut to pieces by his side.
In the afternoon one of my companions of the night before came to see
me. He had been in Warsaw during the revolution, and talked with
enthusiasm of their brief but gallant struggle; and, as it was a
beautiful afternoon, proposed strolling to a little eminence near at
hand, commanding a view of the first battle-ground. I went with him and
he pointed out on the other side of the Vistula the field of Grokow.
Below it was the bridge over which General Romarino carried his little
army during the night, having covered the bridge, the horses' hoofs, and
the wheels of the carriages with straw. This general is now in France
under sentence of death, with a price set upon his head.
The battle of Grokow, the greatest in Europe since that of Waterloo, was
fought on the twenty-fifth of February, 1831, and the place where I
stood commanded a view of the whole ground. The Russian army was under
the command of Diebitsch, and consisted of one hundred and forty-two
thousand infantry, forty thousand cavalry, and three hundred and twelve
pieces of cannon. This enormous force was arranged in two lines of
combatants, and a third of reserve. Its left wing, between Wavre and the
marshes of the Vistula, consisted of four divisions of infantry of
forty-seven thousand men, three of cavalry of ten thousand five hundred,
and one hundred and eight pieces of cannon; the right consisted of three
and a half divisions of infantry of thirty-one thousand men, four
divisions of cavalry of fifteen thousand seven hundred and fifty men,
and fifty-two pieces of cannon. Upon the borders of the great forest
opposite the Forest of Elders, conspicuous from where I stood, was
placed the reserve, commanded by the Grand-duke Constantine. Against
this immense army the Poles opposed less than fifty thousand men and a
hundred pieces of cannon, under the command of General Skrzynecki.
At break of day the whole force of the Russian right wing, with a
terrible fire of fifty pieces of artillery and columns of infantry,
charged the Polish left with the determination of carrying it by a
single and overpowering effort. The Poles, with six thousand five
hundred men and twelve pieces of artillery, not yielding a foot of
ground, and knowing they could hope for no succour, resisted this attack
for several hours, until the Russians slackened their fire. About ten
o'clock the plain was suddenly covered with the Russian forces issuing
from the cover of the forest, seeming one undivided mass of troops. Two
hundred pieces of cannon, posted on a single line, commenced a fire
which made the earth tremble, and was more terrible than the oldest
officers, many of whom had fought at Marengo and Austerlitz, had ever
beheld. The Russians now made an attack upon the right wing; but foiled
in this as upon the left, Diebitsch directed the strength of his army
against the Forest of Elders, hoping to divide the Poles into two parts.
One hundred and twenty pieces of cannon were brought to bear on this one
point, and fifty battalions, incessantly pushed to the attack, kept up a
scene of massacre unheard of in the annals of war. A Polish officer who
was in the battle told me that the small streams which intersected the
forest were so choked with dead that the infantry marched directly over
their bodies. The heroic Poles, with twelve battalions, for four hours
defended the forest against the tremendous attack. Nine times they were
driven out, and nine times, by a series of admirably-executed
manoeuvres, they repulsed the Russians with immense loss. Batteries, now
concentrated in one point, were in a moment hurried to another, and the
artillery advanced to the charge like cavalry, sometimes within a
hundred feet of the enemy's columns, and there opened a murderous fire
of grape.
At three o'clock the generals, many of whom were wounded, and most of
whom had their horses shot under them, and fought on foot at the head of
their divisions, resolved upon a retrograde movement, so as to draw the
Russians on the open plain. Diebitsch, supposing it to be a flight,
looked over to the city and exclaimed, "Well, then, it appears that,
after this bloody day, I shall take tea in the Belvidere Palace." The
Russian troops debouched from the forest. A cloud of Russian cavalry,
with several regiments of heavy cuirassiers at their head, advanced to
the attack. Colonel Pientka, who had kept up an unremitting fire from
his battery for five hours, seated with perfect sang-froid upon a
disabled piece of cannon, remained to give another effective fire, then
left at full gallop a post which he had so long occupied under the
terrible fire of the enemy's artillery. This rapid movement of his
battery animated the Russian forces. The cavalry advanced on a trot upon
the line of a battery of rockets. A terrible discharge was poured into
their ranks, and the horses, galled to madness by the flakes of fire,
became wholly ungovernable, and broke away, spreading disorder in every
direction; the whole body swept helplessly along the fire of the Polish
infantry, and in a few minutes was so completely annihilated that, of a
regiment of cuirassiers who bore inscribed on their helmets the
"Invincibles," not a man escaped. The wreck of the routed cavalry,
pursued by the lancers, carried along in its flight the columns of
infantry; a general retreat commenced, and the cry of "Poland for ever"
reached the walls of Warsaw to cheer the hearts of its anxious
inhabitants. So terrible was the fire of that day, that in the Polish
army there was not a single general or staff officer who had not his
horse killed or wounded under him; two thirds of the officers, and,
perhaps, of the soldiers, had their clothes pierced with balls, and more
than a tenth part of the army were wounded. Thirty thousand Russians and
ten thousand Poles were left on the field of battle; rank upon rank lay
prostrate on the earth, and the Forest of Elders was so strewed with
bodies that it received from that day the name of the "Forest of the
Dead." The Czar heard with dismay, and all Europe with astonishment,
that the crosser of the Balkan had been foiled under the walls of
Warsaw.
All day, my companion said, the cannonading was terrible. Crowds of
citizens, of both sexes and all ages, were assembled on the spot where
we stood, earnestly watching the progress of the battle, sharing in all
its vicissitudes, in the highest state of excitement as the clearing up
of the columns of smoke showed when the Russians or the Poles had fled;
and he described the entry of the remnant of the Polish army into Warsaw
as sublime and terrible; their hair and faces were begrimed with powder
and blood; their armour shattered and broken, and all, even dying men,
were singing patriotic songs; and when the fourth regiment, among whom
was a brother of my companion, and who had particularly distinguished
themselves in the battle, crossed the bridge and filed slowly through
the streets, their lances shivered against the cuirasses of the guards,
their helmets broken, their faces black and spotted with blood, some
erect, some tottering, and some barely able to sustain themselves in the
saddle, above the stern chorus of patriotic songs rose the distracted
cries of mothers, wives, daughters, and lovers, seeking among this
broken band for forms dearer than life, many of whom were then sleeping
on the battle-field. My companion told me that he was then a lad of
seventeen, and had begged with tears to be allowed to accompany his
brother; but his widowed mother extorted from him a promise that he
would not attempt it. All day he had stood with his mother on the very
spot where we did, his hand in hers, which she grasped convulsively, as
every peal of cannon seemed the knell of her son; and when the lancers
passed, she sprang from his side as she recognised in the drooping
figure of an officer, with his spear broken in his hand, the figure of
her gallant boy. He was then reeling in his saddle, his eye was glazed
and vacant, and he died that night in their arms.
The tyranny of the Grand-duke Constantine, the imperial viceroy, added
to the hatred of the Russians, which is the birthright of every Pole,
induced the unhappy revolution of eighteen hundred and thirty. Although,
on the death of Alexander, Constantine waived in favour of his brother
Nicolas his claim to the throne of Russia, his rule in Poland shows that
it was not from any aversion to the exercise of power.
When Constantine was appointed its commander-in-chief, the Polish army
ranked with the bravest in Europe. The Polish legions under Dombrowski
and Poniatowski had kept alive the recollections of the military glory
of their fallen nation. Almost annihilated by the bloody battles in
Italy, where they met their old enemies under Suwarrow, the butcher of
Praga, the proud remnants reorganized and formed the fifth corps of the
"grande armee," distinguished themselves at Smolensk, Borodino, Kalouga,
and the passage of the Berezina, took the field with the wreck of the
army in Saxony, fought at Dresden and Leipsic, and, when Napoleon told
them, brave as they were, that they were free to go home if they
pleased, they scorned to desert him in his waning fortunes, and
accompanied him to Paris. Alexander promised an amnesty, and they
marched with him to Warsaw. Within the first six months many officers of
this army had been grossly insulted; an eyewitness told me that he had
seen, on the great square of Warsaw, the high sheriff tear off the
epaulettes from the shoulders of an officer, and, in the presence of the
whole troops, strike him on the cheek with his hand.
It would, perhaps, be unjust to enumerate, as I heard them, the many
causes of oppression that roused to revolt the slumbering spirit of the
Poles; in the midst of which the French revolution threw all Poland into
commotion. The three days of July were hailed with rapture by every
patriotic heart; the new revolutionary movements in Belgium cheered them
on; and eighty young men, torn from the altars while praying for the
souls of their murdered countrymen on the anniversary of the butchery at
Praga, thrilled every heart and hurried the hour of retribution. The
enthusiasm of youth struck the first blow. A band of ardent young men of
the first families attended the meetings of secret patriotic
associations; and six of them, belonging to the military school,
suspecting they were betrayed, early in the evening went to their
barracks, and proposed to their comrades a plan for liberating their
country. The whole corps, not excepting one sick in bed, amounting in
all to about a hundred and fifty, took up arms, and, under a lieutenant
of nineteen, attacked the palace of Constantine, and almost secured his
person. The grand-duke was then asleep on a couch in a room opening upon
a corridor of the Belvidere Palace, and, roused by a faithful valet,
had barely time to throw a robe over him and fly. The insurgents, with
cries of vengeance, rushed into the interior of the palace, driving
before them the chief of the city police and the aiddecamp of the
grand-duke. The latter had the presence of mind to close the door of the
grand-duke's apartment before he was pierced through with a dozen
bayonets. The wife of the grand-duke, the beautiful and interesting
princess for whom he had sacrificed a crown, hearing the struggle, was
found on her knees offering up prayers to Heaven for the safety of her
husband. Constantine escaped by a window; and the young soldiers, foiled
in their attempt, marched into the city, and, passing the barracks of
the Russian guards, daringly fired a volley to give notice of their
coming. Entering the city, they broke open the prisons and liberated the
state prisoners, burst into the theatres, crying out, "Women, home; men,
to arms," forced the arsenal, and in two hours forty thousand men were
under arms. Very soon the fourth Polish regiment joined them; and before
midnight the remainder of the Polish troops in Warsaw, declaring that
their children were too deeply implicated to be abandoned, espoused the
popular cause. Some excesses were committed; and General Stanislaus
Potocki, distinguished in the revolution of Kosciusko, for hesitating
was killed, exclaiming with his last breath that it was dreadful to die
by the hands of his countrymen.
Chlopicki, the comrade of Kosciusko, was proclaimed dictator by an
immense multitude in the Champ de Mars. For some time the inhabitants of
Warsaw were in a delirium; the members of the patriotic association,
and citizens of all classes, assembled every day, carrying arms, and
with glasses in their hands, in the saloon of the theatre and at a
celebrated coffee-house, discussing politics and singing patriotic
songs. In the theatres the least allusion brought down thunders of
applause, and at the end of the piece heralds appeared on the stage
waving the banners of the dismembered provinces. In the pit they sang in
chorus national hymns; the boxes answered them; and sometimes the
spectators finished by scaling the stage and dancing the Mazurka and the
Cracoviak.
The fatal issue of this revolution is well known. The Polish nation
exerted and exhausted its utmost strength, and the whole force of the
colossal empire was brought against it, and, in spite of prodigies of
valour, crushed it. The moment, the only moment when gallant, chivalric,
and heroic Poland could have been saved and restored to its rank among
nations, was suffered to pass by, and no one came to her aid. The
minister of France threw out the bold boast that a hundred thousand men
stood ready to march to her assistance; but France and all Europe looked
on and saw her fall. Her expiring diet ordered a levy in mass, and made
a last appeal, "In the name of God; in the name of liberty; of a nation
placed between life and death; in the name of kings and heroes who have
fought for religion and humanity; in the name of future generations; in
the name of justice and the deliverance of Europe;" but her dying appeal
was unheard. Her last battle was under the walls of Warsaw; and then she
would not have fallen, but even in Poland there were traitors. The
governor of Warsaw blasted the laurels won in the early battles of the
revolution by the blackest treason. He ordered General Romarino to
withdraw eight thousand soldiers and chase the Russians beyond the
frontier at Brezc. While he was gone the Russians pressed Warsaw; he
could have returned in time to save it, but was stopped with directions
not to advance until farther orders. In the mean time Warsaw fell, with
the curse of every Pole upon the head of its governor. The traitor now
lives ingloriously in Russia, disgraced and despised, while the young
lieutenant is in unhappy but not unhonoured exile in Siberia.
So ended the last heroic struggle of Poland. It is dreadful to think so,
but it is greatly to be feared that Poland is blotted for ever from the
list of nations. Indeed, by a late imperial ukase, Poland is expunged
from the map of Europe; her old and noble families are murdered,
imprisoned, or in exile; her own language is excluded from the offices
of government, and even from the public schools; her national character
destroyed; her national dress proscribed; her national colours trampled
under foot; her national banner, the white eagle of Poland, is in the
dust. Warsaw is abandoned, and become a Russian city; her best citizens
are wandering in exile in foreign lands, while Cossack and Circassian
soldiers are filing through her streets, and the banner of Russia is
waving over her walls.
Perhaps it is not relevant, but I cannot help saying that there is no
exaggeration in the stories which reach us at our own doors of the
misfortunes and sufferings of Polish exiles. I have met them wandering
in many different countries, and particularly I remember one at Cairo.
He had fought during the whole Polish revolution, and made his escape
when Warsaw fell. He was a man of about thirty-five years of age,
dressed in a worn military frockcoat, and carrying himself with a manly
and martial air. He had left a wife and two children at Warsaw. At
Constantinople he had written to the emperor requesting permission to
return, and even promising never again to take up arms against Russia,
but had received for answer that the amnesty was over and the day of
grace was past; and the unfortunate Pole was then wandering about the
world like a cavalier of fortune or a knight of romance, with nothing to
depend upon but his sword. He had offered his services to the sultan and
to the Pacha of Egypt; he was then poor, and, with the bearing of a
gentleman and the pride of a soldier, was literally begging his bread. I
could sympathize in the misfortunes of an exiled Pole, and felt that his
distress must indeed be great, that he who had perilled life and ties
dearer than life in the cause of an oppressed country, should offer his
untarnished sword to the greatest despot that ever lived.
The general appearance of Warsaw is imposing. It stands on a hill of
considerable elevation on the left bank of the Vistula; the Zamech or
Chateau of the Kings of Poland spreads its wings midway between the
river and the summit of the hill, and churches and towering spires
checker at different heights the distant horizon. Most of the houses are
built of stone, or brick stuccoed; they are numbered in one continued
series throughout the city, beginning from the royal palace (occupied by
Paskiewitch), which is numbered _one_, and rising above number five
thousand. The churches are numerous and magnificent; the palaces,
public buildings, and many of the mansions of noblemen, are on a large
scale, very showy, and, in general, striking for their architectural
designs. One great street runs irregularly through the whole city, of
which Miodowa, or Honey-street, and the Novoy Swiat, or New World, are
the principal and most modern portions. As in all aristocratic cities,
the streets are badly paved, and have no trottoirs for the
foot passengers. The Russian drosky is in common use; the public
carriages are like those in Western Europe, though of a low form; the
linings generally painted red; the horses large and handsome, with large
collars of red or green, covered with small brass rings, which sound
like tinkling bells; and the carts are like those in our own city, only
longer and lower, and more like our brewer's dray. The hotels are
numerous, generally kept in some of the old palaces, and at the entrance
of each stands a large porter, with a cocked hat and silver-headed cane,
to show travellers to their apartments and receive the names of
visiters. There are two principal kukiernia, something like the French
cafes, where many of the Varsovians breakfast and lounge in the
mornings.
[Illustration: Royal Palace at Warsaw.]
The Poles, in their features, looks, customs, and manners, resemble
Asiatics rather than Europeans; and they are, no doubt, descended from
Tartar ancestors. Though belonging to the Sclavonic race, which occupies
nearly the whole extent of the vast plains of Western Europe, they have
advanced more than the others from the rude and barbarous state which
characterizes this race; and this is particularly manifest at Warsaw. An
eyewitness, describing the appearance of the Polish deputies at Paris
sent to announce the election of Henry of Anjou as successor of
Sigismund, says, "It is impossible to describe the general astonishment
when we saw these ambassadors in long robes, fur caps, sabres, arrows,
and quivers; but our admiration was excessive when we saw the
sumptuousness of their equipages; the scabbards of their swords adorned
with jewels; their bridles, saddles, and horse-cloths decked in the same
way," &c.
But none of this barbaric display is now seen in the streets of Warsaw.
Indeed, immediately on entering it I was struck with the European aspect
of things. It seemed almost, though not quite, like a city of Western
Europe, which may, perhaps, be ascribed, in a great measure, to the
entire absence of the semi-Asiatic costumes so prevalent in all the
cities of Russia, and even at St. Petersburgh; and the only thing I
remarked peculiar in the dress of the inhabitants was the remnant of a
barbarous taste for show, exhibiting itself in large breastpins,
shirt-buttons, and gold chains over the vest; the mustache is
universally worn. During the war of the revolution immediately
succeeding our own, Warsaw stood the heaviest brunt; and when Kosciusko
fell fighting before it, its population was reduced to seventy five
thousand. Since that time it has increased, and is supposed now to be
one hundred and forty thousand, thirty thousand of whom are Jews.
Calamity after calamity has befallen Warsaw; still its appearance is
that of a gay city. Society consists altogether of two distinct and
distant orders, the nobles and the peasantry, without any intermediate
degrees. I except, of course, the Jews, who form a large item in her
population, and whose long beards, thin and anxious faces, and piercing
eyes met me at every corner of Warsaw. The peasants are in the lowest
stage of mental degradation. The nobles, who are more numerous than in
any other country in Europe, have always, in the eyes of the public,
formed the people of Poland. They are brave, prompt, frank, hospitable,
and gay, and have long been called the French of the North, being French
in their habits, fond of amusements, and living in the open air, like
the lounger in the Palais Royal, the Tuileries, the Boulevards, and
Luxembourgh, and particularly French in their political feelings, the
surges of a revolution in Paris being always felt at Warsaw. They regard
the Germans with mingled contempt and aversion, calling them "dumb" in
contrast with their own fluency and loquacity; and before their fall
were called by their neighbours the "proud Poles." They consider it the
deepest disgrace to practise any profession, even law or medicine, and,
in case of utmost necessity, prefer the plough. A Sicilian, a
fellow-passenger from Palermo to Naples, who one moment was groaning in
the agony of seasickness and the next playing on his violin, said to me,
"Canta il, signore?" "Do you sing?" I answered "No;" and he continued,
"Suonate?" "Do you play?" I again answered "No;" and he asked me, with
great simplicity, "Cosa fatte? Niente?" "What do you do? Nothing?" and I
might have addressed the same question to every Pole in Warsaw.
The whole business of the country is in the hands of the Jews, and all
the useful and mechanical arts are practised by strangers. I did not
find a Pole in a single shop in Warsaw; the proprietors of the hotels
and coffee-houses are strangers, principally Germans; my tailor was a
German; my shoemaker a Frenchman, and the man who put a new crystal in
my watch an Italian from Milan. But though this entire absence of all
useful employment is, on grounds of public policy, a blot on their
national character, as a matter of feeling it rather added to the
interest with which I regarded the "proud Poles;" and perhaps it was
imaginary, but I felt all the time I was in Warsaw that, though the
shops and coffee-houses were open, and crowds thronged the streets, a
sombre air hung over the whole city; and if for a moment this impression
left me, a company of Cossacks, with their wild music, moving to another
station, or a single Russian officer riding by in a drosky, wrapped in
his military cloak, reminded me that the foot of a conqueror was upon
the necks of the inhabitants of Warsaw. This was my feeling after a long
summer day's stroll through the streets; and in the evening I went to
the theatre, which was a neat building, well filled, and brilliantly
lighted; but the idea of a pervading and gloomy spirit so haunted me
that in a few moments I left what seemed a heartless mockery of
pleasure. I ought to add that I did not understand a word of the piece;
the _triste_ air which touched me may have been induced by the
misfortunes of the stage hero; and, in all probability, I should have
astonished a melancholy-looking neighbour if, acting under my
interpretation of his visage, I had expressed to him my sympathy in the
sufferings of his country.